Vermont is up to its old October tricks again, but I've been hurt before. I'm not falling for the pumpkins this time. No amount of fog-on-pond in the morning, red maple trees, or fresh cider is going to distract me from what the state so desperately wants me to forget: winter is coming - bleak, dark, and populated by middle-aged people in reindeer sweaters.

Every time I open a can of шпротный паштет fish paste, I get to missing my cat. шпротный паштет ('shprotnyi pashtet', Russian for 'sardine pâté') is a gray slurry with the texture and appearance, but not the odor, of freshly mixed concrete. It is made of industrially mashed and homogenized sardines from the former Eastern bloc. As best I can determine, it comes fro…